


To forget is to remember

by ninamalfoy



Category: NaPolA | Before the Fall (2004)
Genre: Abandoned WIP, unbetaed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-13
Updated: 2010-01-13
Packaged: 2017-10-06 05:58:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/50429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninamalfoy/pseuds/ninamalfoy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is an AU starting in 1958. It was the start of a huge epic that floated around in my head for a long time, but never got written, sadly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To forget is to remember

**Author's Note:**

> First published on LJ on March 10th, 2005.

FRIEDRICH WEIMER, 1958

He's sitting in his little study. The room is soaked in dusty sunlight, poring over the faded oak desk and highlighting patterns in the old Persian carpet, a present from his parents-in-law. The carpet was almost too big for the room, but in the end they managed to fit it in. It is currently rather cluttered with three big boxes full of memorabilia from his late father, things from his own past. A past that he has managed to forget mostly, concentrating on being a teacher, a husband and a father.

A knock. "Papa, may I come in?" - "Ja."

At age ten, his son already looks much like the man he will turn into; tousled blonde hair and eyes just this shade of warm brown that comes from his mother's side, but the rest is pretty much standard Weimer material. Square jaw, strong limbs and a good build. He works his way around the huge boxes, touches them curiously. "What is in there?"

"Things from my past, from back when I was as old as you," Friedrich explains, smiling at him.

"Oh, may I see them, papa? Please?" The curiosity in his voice is much too evident and Friedrich, giving in to the inevitable – they have to be unpacked in any case – nods. He drags the first box towards him, the letter-opener glittering in the sunlight as he cuts the strings open.

His school reports from the Volksschule and school books as far as he can see. Friedrich puts them onto his desk, careful to not topple the stacks accidentally, and then there are still some letters at the bottom of the box. His son reaches into the box and picks them up carefully.

"Open them, if you want to," Friedrich says. He has been surprised at how little it touched him to see his old reports, his old books. Things that once played an important part in his past. He doesn't think that there'll be actually anything in there to be afraid of.

There are some papers and pictures in the letters, things that his father obviously didn't know where they should belong to, but included them anyway. His son is looking through them, the curious look not yet gone from his face, but slowly making place for the bored mien he has far too often seen on his son's face when he's presented with boring or stuffy things that have no impact on the excitable mind of a ten-year-old. But then a picture – the last one - seems to refuel his interest once more and Friedrich is curious as to what it might show. His little brother maybe?

"Who is that boy?", his son asks, earnestly, and Friedrich can't help gasping as he comes face to face with him.

_Albrecht._

The hair – the picture is black-white, but Friedrich knows that it was a dark brown, sometimes glinting silvery when the sun hit it, featherythin the strands, combed back straight but not preventing the slight wave, and the determined look, oh, its intensity is almost too much to bear. The impact of seeing him after all this time when he was too busy to forget everything about this past, throwing himself into learning, studying, meeting girls, marrying the right one and raising a little son, all in order to create a life vastly different from the one he led before, it overwhelms him and the memories boil over, thousands and thousands of flashesblinks going through his mind, and he's reeling back, gasping for air.

"Papa, what is it?" His son's voice is worried, rising to his feet and stepping around the box to stand next to his father's chair, laying a hand on his father's arm.

He isn't smiling, he isn't smiling, this is the only thought like a broken record running through Friedrich's mind, he should be smiling, should be telling me that it's all right, should be there, shouldn't be –

_dead._

He shakes his head, feeling tears well up behind his eyes and squeezes them shut, willing them to go away. "It's nothing – nothing, really."

"Who was he, then, papa?" his son insists, still holding the picture in his hand and Friedrich takes it from his hand carefully, smoothing a finger over the cold surface, over Albrecht.

"He- he was a friend of mine," Friedrich says softly. And he is surprised about the deep sadness that reverbrates through his own voice.

"Where is he now?" his son asks quietly, not having removed the hand on Friedrich's arm yet. Friedrich can't prevent a soft sigh escaping his lips.

"He died. And no, not in the war. He died just a short time after this picture was taken."

"Oh." His son's distress is audible. "He's still young on there."

Friedrich nods. "He was going to be seventeen in a week when he died." And I couldn't bear it, couldn't bear it so much that I almost went mad, because he left me, just like that, and I was lost.

"What… what was his name?", his son asks, tentiatively. Friedrich puts the picture of Albrecht on the table, smiling sadly at his son.

"Albrecht."

His son's eyes widen. "That's my name."

Friedrich nods again, smiling sadly. "Yes, and I couldn't think of a better one when you were born."

* * *

ALBRECHT WEIMER, 1966

He sometimes slips into his father's study when he knows he isn't there. There's something soothing about this room, partly due to the comforting smell of tobacco and dust, and seeing the rows of books along the one wall, their covers more or less faded from the sun, and little knickknacks that his father picked up here and there scattered over the shelves.

And there are pictures on the desk, and he smiles at the one picture showing him, as a little boy, with his very first school bag, made out of leather and ungainly and it had belonged to a million people before him or something like that, but he had been happy as he was one of the few with a real school bag and didn't have to carry his books home in a strap.

He traces the ebony frame, and then continues onto the gilded frame of his parents' wedding picture, his parents linking arms, mother resplendent in a white gown and his father smiling up to him, strained around his eyes – he had just got back from Russia where he was held in a POW camp – and he looks thin, but there's a hidden strength in the quiet look. His father doesn't like to talk about the war, and he always fenced off Albrecht's inquisitions with vague answers or just declares this topic off limits. Most of the parents that Albrecht knows are the same.

And then there's the last picture, the unknown namesake. Albrecht takes it up from its place, looking straight into this young man's face, the intensity of the boy's stare as strong as ever. He's serious, not a smile marring his lips, and there's a strange quality about him. It's as if he knew that he wasn't destined to live a long life, that he had to pour what was left of him into the short space of almost seventeen years that he was allowed to have and thus the strange intensity, three- or four-fold almost. Albrecht traces the contours of his face. The other Albrecht. His father has no other remainders of his past in this room. As far as Albrecht knows he didn't even look at the stuff in the two other boxes from grandfather, their strings are still uncut. They're now up in the attic, together with the school books and old reports. Only this picture was allowed to be here.

And he knows that it holds all of his father's attraction. He has often opened the door quietly, to check up on his father or intending to just have a little talk and has often seen him holding this picture in his hands, just looking at it, never wavering, as if he was talking to this dead boy – silently, in his mind.

And maybe that's what he has been doing after all, having conversations with him in his head, telling him what became of his old friend here, a married teacher in a little city in the Ruhr region, content with his life – at least, Albrecht likes to think so. He knows that his father was as young as he was when the second World War took place, and that he fought against soldiers when he was nineteen, barely older than himself, but he never talks about it. Whenever something about the War is in the news or on the radio, his father just listens, and sometimes changes the programme.

He sighs, putting the picture back. He still doesn't know why Albrecht died so early; he couldn't have been ill, could he? Something like tuberculosis? Or did he get into an unlucky accident, getting hit by a car or something like that?

It's a strange feeling knowing that he's now older than his namesake, Albrecht thinks.


End file.
